blin sunning himself on the woodpile. I say, Nelly, you're not
going, are you?"

"I must. It's time to get dinner. Mr. Pennington will be in from the
fields soon."

The next minute he heard her stepping briskly about the kitchen,
shooing out intruding cats, and humming a darky air to herself. He
went reluctantly back to the shore and rowed across the river in a
brown study.

I don't know whether Winslow was afflicted with chronic thirst or not,
or whether the East side water wasn't so good as that of the West
side; but I do know that he fairly haunted the Pennington farmhouse
after that. Mrs. Pennington was home the next time he went, and he
asked her about her new girl. To his surprise the good lady was
unusually reticent. She couldn't really say very much about Nelly. No,
she didn't belong anywhere near Riverside. In fact, she--Mrs.
Pennington--didn't think she had any settled home at present. Her
father was travelling over the country somewhere. Nelly was a good
little girl, and very obliging. Beyond this Winslow could get no more
information, so he went around and talked to Nelly, who was sitting on
the bench under the poplars and seemed absorbed in watching the
sunset.

She dropped her g's badly and made some grammatical errors that caused
Winslow's flesh to creep on his bones. But any man could have forgiven
mistakes from such dimpled lips in such a sweet voice.

He asked her to go for a row up the river in the twilight and she
assented; she handled an oar very well, he found out, and the exercise
became her. Winslow tried to get her to talk about herself, but failed
signally and had to content himself with Mrs. Pennington's meagre
information. He told her about himself frankly enough--how he had had
fever in the spring and had been ordered to spend the summer in the
country and do nothing useful until his health was fully restored, and
how lonesome it was in Riverside in general and at the Beckwith farm
in particular. He made out quite a dismal case for himself and if
Nelly wasn't sorry for him, she should have been.

* * * * *

At the end of a fortnight Riverside folks began to talk about Winslow
and the Penningtons' hired girl. He was reported to be "dead gone" on
her; he took her out rowing every evening, drove her to preaching up
the Bend on Sunday nights, and haunted the Pennington farmhouse. Wise
folks shook their heads over it and wondered that Mrs. Pennington
allow